Dante Lam, Fruit Chan, Vietnamese SciFi And A Whole Lot More Added To The Berlin Lineup!

The 2014 Berlinale just got a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more interesting with the complete lineups for the Panorama section and the Berlin Specials announced today. Given that the Panorama includes That Demon Within by Dante Lam, a new horror / thriller from Dumplings director Fruit Chan and a Vietnamese science fiction offering titled 2030 my hunch is that this is where most of the interest will lie for ScreenAnarchy readers but the Specials section - including bigger titles such as American Hustle and Diego Luna's Cesar Chavez biopic - has plenty to offer as well.

Here are the complete announcements:

With 24 of them world premieres, 36 films from 29 countries will give
an overview of current international fictional-feature production. Most
recently invited are works from Norway, Ethiopia, Mexico, India, Iran,
Georgia, Greece, Hungary and Austria - with returning filmmakers Elfi
Mikesch and Umut Dağ, who opened Panorama 2012 with Kuma, his directorial debut.

The titles just added include a remarkable number of Asian productions:In Ieji (Homeland)
by Nao Kubota (Japan), a farmer's son, who first fled to the city,
explores his home village in the Fukushima district, an area that is
actually still a no-go zone. In the South Korean film Night Flight,
LeeSong Hee-il presents a poignantly unsettling duel between two
schoolmates in a society deeply disturbed by the pressure to succeed.
LeeSong previously showed the films No Regret and White Night in Panorama.One
of this year's most astonishing debuts comes from 21-year-old Zhou Hao
from the People's Republic of China: the rough intimacy and confident
sense of style in his film YE (The Night) are reminiscent of Fassbinder, Genet or Wong Kar Wai. Masters of Hong Kong cinema are now also in the line-up: Dante Lam, who in Mo Jing (That Demon Within)
successfully employs the entertaining means of an action film to raise
great moral issues; and Fruit Chan, who in The Midnight After has
adapted an online serial novel, and given it a mysterious apocalyptic
vibe - Chan's 2005 Panorama entry, Dumplings, also still brings back fierce memories.Two
Philippine and two Taiwanese works were announced earlier. They will be
complemented by a film from well-known Taiwanese-Malaysian director
Tsai Ming-liang. He will present the next segment of his experimental
"Walker" series, entitled Xi You (Journey to the West), a French production with Lee Kang Sheng and Denis Lavant.

Opening filmsPanorama's main programme will open on Thursday, February 6, with a Vietnamese sci-fi surprise: Nước (2030)
by Nghiêm-Minh Nguyễn-Võ. Ocean levels have risen and the land of many
farmers is now under water. Vegetables are cultivated on floating farms,
a catastrophic situation from which global corporations want to profit.

Panorama main-programme premieres will be showing at CinemaxX 7.

On February 7, the same day Jalil Lespert's film Yves Saint Laurent, as already announced, is opening Panorama Special, US-American filmmaker Ira Sachs will present his latest work, Love Is Strange, with Alfred Molina, John Lithgow and Marisa Tomei. (In 2005, Sachs showed Forty Shades of Blue in Panorama; and in 2012, Keep the Lights on.) With these two films, the Berlinale is returning to the newly reopened Zoo Palast in the city's western centre.

The complete programme of Panorama Dokumente will be announced in the next press release.

Here is the list of the most recently selected films (for the first press release, please go to www.berlinale.de):

(WP= World Premiere, IP= International Premiere, EP = European Premiere)

Berlinale Special is part of the official programme and
presents recent works by contemporary filmmakers, as well as film
portraits of renowned personalities and extraordinary formats. This year
18 productions have been invited to participate in Berlinale Special, including nine world premieres.

With many prominent guests expected to attend, the Gala Screenings
are being held, as usual, at the Friedrichstadt-Palast and, for the
first time, at the Zoo Palast.

"Wonderful that the legendary Zoo Palast may now be added as a venue
for big Berlinale films. In 2014 we will celebrate several Gala
Screenings of Berlinale Special at this historic movie theatre. Of course, we'll also roll out the red carpet at the Friedrichstadt-Palast for the stars of Berlinale Special," says Festival Director Dieter Kosslick.

The presentations at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele will again
include moderated discussions with the filmmakers after the screenings.